You’ve just arrived in a swampy, dim town. As you look around, your gaze is met with shacks and cabins. It smells of rotted wood and wet moss. You duck and step into a tattered tent, illuminated by a series of candles suspended in the air. At the back of the tent, an old hag raises her head, “What brings you to this dingy town? she begins, then pauses to study your face—”Ah, it’s you. I’ve been expecting you. Sit,” she gestures at a cushion, “Tell me your story.” ((How do you respond?)) Renge sneers at the woman, the absurdity of such a statement taking her aback. She did not believe such claims. This woman, why, she's quite sure she has never gazed upon her face before. At least, from what she could tell. Though the candle light rests easy on her eyes, it was still difficult to see details from such a distance. She approaches cautiously, but unafraid. Head held highly as her palm rests against her scabbard.
"I doubt you have expected me," it rolls off her tongue rudely, words sharp as a knife. If she were not so desperate for directions, she would have spared herself the confines of the rags and sticks the hag calls a tent. Renge idles for a moment, lips pursing as she decides what to tell the crone.
"Why, must I actually tell you? Could you not infer? Since you know me so well." She cusps her ears for a moment, showing off their roundness, and then again to her face, to highlight her features. The action drips with a certain frustration, the inflection of an exhausted traveler from a long-winded journey. She sighs in defeat, a sound near naught heard from such a fearsome soldier. Her hands fall, yielding.
"Oyashiman. Sakuragakure. Farfolk to you, I suppose. I am looking for the way to Norland. I am to meet my brother there. I imagine it is... north. But how north? Speak."
An attempt was made to conceal her uneasiness, stepping in uncharted lands. On her lonesome, as well. A detail she would not admit. Asking for directions always involved a comment on how someone would be expecting her. It warded off any opportunistic individuals. Most of the time anyways. Her eldest brother still remained in Sakuragakure, dealing with the fallout of a family situation. It escalated, quite a bit. Up to the point of urging Renge to leave their home country. Having scrounged together the last of their funds, her brother paid a bribe for Renge's safe passage out of Sakuragakure through a trading boat.
Having never travelled that far before, she was left disoriented, unsure of where exactly she was going, and constantly agitated. Her condition, though manageable, only added to her list of obstacles-- plaguing her with rapid eye movement and photophobia. To ease the difficulty she found herself only travelling in the dark, becoming an artificially nocturnal creature with no direction except 'Norland.' The vague kingdom where her brother spoke of meeting when it came to pass.
Her hand pulls at the handle of her sword slightly, irritation getting to her. "I shall know if you lie."
